People at Astrodienst
Dr. Alois Treindl

Alois
Treindl (born march 7, 1950) is the founder and director of Astrodienst AG.
He was born in Germany and came to Zürich, Switzerland in 1976 as a research
assistant in Physics at the Swiss Federal Institude (ETH). Alois graduated
from ETH with a PhD in physics in 1981. During his graduate time, he started
to be interested in various areas beyond the limits of conventional science,
e.g. humanistic psychology, states of altered consciousness, parapsychology
and finally astrology. Astrology was for him a way to bring his main fields
of interest together, his fascination with computing (an extensive programmer
since 1970) and his curiosity about the human psyche. A chance encounter with
a second hand astrology book got him started in the summer of 1979, and he
was fascinated by the subject which has remained a passion ever since. Alois
was surprised the find a number of astrology books at the university's library,
among them the main work of the leading German astrologer of the 20th century,
Thomas Ring, the four volumes of Astrologische Menschenkunde. He started studying
with Thomas Ring for the next few years, until the death of the master in 1983.

Early on Alois wrote his first computer program to draw colour charts, and
offered a computer service under the Astrodienst brand since January 1980.
He soon shared his planetary routines (PLACALC and SWISS
EPHEMERIS) with the community of astrological programmers, and they have
become the industry's standard tools for astrological computing.

In 1983, Alois joined forces with Peter Isler and Astrodienst AG was incorporated,
which at the time was a computing service for the professional astrological
community.

Liz Greene

In 1984 Alois
met Liz Greene for
the first time, and went to study with her in 1985, which proved to be
a turning point in his life. The two of them came to cooperate very closely.
He developed the software, she provided the model of chart interpretation
and her extensive astrological experience. The idea behind this collaboration
was to recreate Liz Greene's approach to horoscope interpretation on
a computer system. What was initially deemed hopelessly complex proved
to be achievable within a very short time span of two years, after all.
Alois had mastered the current techniques from the field of artificial
intelligence and knowledge engineering, and they found a way to take
a computer-generated holistic look at the chartwheel and thus produce
an interpretation which offered a detailed representation of the person
involved. The cook-book-style interpretations ventured by competitors
where thus overcome by the Psychological Horoscope Analysis, released
as a product in 1987. It was soon to be followed by other
types of astrological reports.

Internet

In
1987, at a time when the world wide web was not yet spoken of, Alois
Treindl was well aware of the future importance of worldwide computer
networks. At this date Astrodienst began building its private network
of worldwide partner companies, based on modem links. In the 90ies, the
Internet domain astro.com was secured early on and the website started
in 1996. What began with a free atlas and time zone service as a gift
to the astrology community expanded and eventually reached a much larger
audience than anyone would have dared to dream of.

A lot of the software behind the products at Astrodienst AG is the
work of Alois Treindl.

Personal

In
his free time, Alois takes care of the forum at www.astro.com. He loves
reading, and is rarely seen without a book or newspaper. In recent years,
he has taken up sport, mostly bicycling and running.

Four
times so far Alois has run the Zürich Marathon, and twice the marathon Nice - Cannes (Nov. 2015).

Alois divides his life between Zurich and his secondary residence in the Var, France.

Awards for a lifetime achievement

Alois Treindl has been honoured twice in autumn 2016. On October 8th, the German Association of Astrologers (DAV - Deutscher Astrologenverband) awarded him the ″Golden Jupiter 2016″. In his laudatory speech, Rolf Liefeld mentioned the major importance of the ephemeris calculation softwares ″Swiss Ephemeris″ and PLACALC, which are now used by all notable astrological computer software. Liefeld also praised the significance of the chart calculation services at www.astro.com, AstroWiki and Astro-Databank as important pillars for the astrological community.

A week later, on October 15th, Alois Treindl received the ″Lifetime Achievement Award″ at the ISAR conference 2016 in Costa Mesa, California. ISAR (International Society for Astrological Research) is the largest international astrology association, and this prize was also given in recognition of his life′s work.

AstroWiki
by Astrodienst is a free encyclopedia of astrology. It collects the knowledge
of the astrological community and makes it available to everybody. The Wiki`s
cadre consists of two astrological lexica.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.